“We see the outcome of different musical experiences, whether it’s rhythm, or melody or harmony, but we haven’t always understood it,” Reuer said. “In our profession, we appreciate the science and the research because it explains why something works and how much it can reach a client, whether they have a stroke or Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or autism or someone who has cancer. We want to know why they respond the way they do.”

Curb your enthusiasm

Even with the breakthroughs in technology supporting brain research, however, patience is required.

“I think people perceive science as this body of facts,” said Iverson, who is affiliated with the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. “But it’s really this living, creative act — just like music is in a way.”

For his part, Iverson has been researching pulse and rhythm, which has ramifications for multiple parts of the brain and potential treatments.

“We might find that certain types of training, like rhythm training, might affect certain parts of the brain,” Iverson said. “Down the line, we might have much better brain imaging of everybody and we can make a portrait of each person’s brain and say, ‘Well, look, that pathway is a little underdeveloped in this person. Let’s have him do some rhythm training,’ if we know that builds up that pathway.

Mullen pointed to music’s potential to help the encoding of auditory stimuli, a process that apparently degrades with age, but not necessarily because the neurons are failing.

“In many cases, it’s really more like the encoding of the stimuli has become corrupted,” Mullen said. “But if we can show that with auditory training, you can forestall, perhaps even reverse that process ... that’s obviously something that has a big impact on people’s day-to-day lives as they age.”

Khalil is working with children on issues of synchronicity and time processing and perception.

“The idea is that to be able to perform or interact in any way we need to share a sense of the passing of time,” Khalil said. “We need to know when to speak, know when to listen, and to be able to generate a prediction of what important events are about to happen based on the temporal pattern around us.”

Music, of course, provides an ideal analogue to that process. Indeed, could the adaptive function of music in all cultures be that it offers a way through which individuals learn certain vital behaviors, including cooperation? Or is music a reflection of the cooperative behavior they’ve already learned? And most importantly for scientists, how does that process work?

“There are a number of threads that could be put together, but it sounds way too exciting,” Khalil said. “People want to make a jump way over to here. I always have to put the brakes on and say, ‘It’s really exciting, but we’re not quite there yet’.”